RIM BlackBerry

Why Everyone's Hating On BlackBerry

With global BlackBerry services only restored this morning, things can’t seem to get worse for RIM these days. With PlayBook sales looking like that '50s dance where you hold your nose and sink, and phone sales not looking much better relative to the competition, RIM’s now looking like it’s even bad at basic office IT.

In a comically metaphoric picture of what’s wrong with the company, global-service outages resulted thanks to everything getting bunged up by its central server, where all BlackBerry traffic gets siphoned through. After RIM BlackBerry server toilets started backup, they were so full of data crap that they effectively denial-of-serviced themselves. Customers were the ones left holding RIM-branded turds.

The kicker here is that this wasn’t an Anonymous hack. The problems were entirely RIM's own doing. The company's now-infamous bureaucracy has harmed the brand in a time when smart leadership and clear vision are the only thing to prevent it from being gang-shivved by competitors, American Me style. RIM's complete lack of sex appeal was bad for consumer sales, but this latest tale of incompetence has even the suits pissed. Increasingly, the people using BlackBerrys are forced to by their work, and that looks like it won’t last either.